‘Thomas Was Alone’ Lesson 3: Creating a game and reflecting on participation
During a third and final lesson inspired by the computer game ‘Thomas Was Alone’, a class of Y6 children begin to create their own versions of the game, using Scratch. Objectives With the...
View ArticleMinecraft: The Social Capital of Virtual Secrets
Today’s Minecraft Club was the first for almost six weeks. Things have been hectic and real-life has repeatedly got in the way, in spite of regular requests from children. So, it has been a while… As a...
View ArticleMinecraft Mimesis
“Language has many words for the imaginative function: dream, simile, analogy, theory, fable, schema, game. All involve not just one-to-one correspondences, in the way indicated by the idea of copying...
View Article‘Isolated Together': Connections, Street Art and Urban Exploration
‘The past beats inside me like a second heart’ – The Sea, John Banville ‘Who sees the interiors like young Willem once did? – Song for Willem De Kooning, Manic Street Preachers I recently took this...
View ArticleMinecraft – Beginning a new term
As of September, the new school term started without me. Although not entirely, as I have already been back into school to teach on supply, to complete work on the school website and to run a weekly...
View ArticleMinecraft Club – Session 2
Session 2 - Problems with the network caused a bit of a delay. I had been teaching the class all day and we had used the laptops during the afternoon, meaning that a number of them started to do the...
View ArticleMinecraft Club – Session 3
Session 3 – Unlike the previous week, I hadn’t been teaching today and therefore had chance to get the computers ready, which led to less issues with updates and logins. As a result, the session felt...
View ArticleMinecraft Club – Session 4
Construction continued tonight on the community space. Some issues with lagging but generally an enjoyable session. I spent quite a bit of time talking to J who came to sit next to me. He decided to...
View ArticleMinecraft Club: Paratexts and the Funeral of Thouga the Ocelot
I have made a decision not to try to summarise every week of Minecraft Club, mainly because I don’t have to! It is actually more fun (and less stressful) to take part in the club, or sit back and take...
View Article‘There’s a horse in McDonalds’ (Minecraft Club 14.10.14)
My fieldnotes this week covered fourteen pages in my A5 book, yet I feel I only scratched the surface of the events. At only week two of a total of thirty-something, I recognise that this is probably...
View ArticleSurvival (Minecraft Club 25.11.14)
A theme throughout the last five weeks of the club (and, indeed, the clubs I have led over the last two years) has been a repeated request to play in survival mode, rather than creative. I have...
View Article#LRA14 Conference
I was really fortunately to be able to attend the Literacy Research Association Conference in Florida earlier this month. I presented my work on children’s singing around Minecraft. Here is my...
View ArticleUsing Virtual Models #2
I have written previously about my use of David Gauntlett’s ‘Identity Models’ approach in order to discuss the club with the children, adapted to take place in Minecraft. This post relates to the...
View ArticlePerspectives (Minecraft Club #11 27.01.15)
Note: Although I try to write these accounts of the club in the past tense, they often slip into present tense – I’m not entirely sure why, or which is best for this purpose. My tendency to take the...
View ArticleUsing Virtual Models #3
In this post I will reflect on last week’s discussion activity – as before, loosely based on David Gauntlett’s ‘Identity Models’ work. Other events in school this week meant there was no time for full...
View ArticleBullet Points (Minecraft Club #13 24.02.15)
I have been reading my fieldnotes and reviewing some of the video from this week’s session. As usual, there is so much going on that it is hard to know where to begin. For some reason, it seems to...
View ArticleScreenshot Tour (Minecraft Club #14 03.03.15)
This week I tried to spend more time in the game with the children. I’ll make this post screenshots only – I need to return to the rest of the data from this week when I have more time.
View ArticleUsing Virtual Models #4
Another lunchtime discussion session where four children built models using the iPad version, contributing to the ongoing map of models. This time I used some printed screenshots and photographs from...
View ArticleStorying in and around a Minecraft Community
I will be presenting a webinar as part of the CAMELOT Project Webinars on Friday 13th March at 10.30. You can find the link on this page and my abstract is below. Storying in and around a Minecraft...
View ArticleVideo Games as Narrative Spaces
I will be running a workshop on Friday 27th March at Sheffield Hallam University for PGCE students, titled: ‘Video Games as Narrative Spaces’. This workshop is built around three examples of video...
View Article
